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In this episode (split into two parts) we talk to Tim Mackintosh Smith, author of “Arabs; a three thousand year history of peoples, tribes and empires“. We talk about his book and about Arab history and contemporary reality. Check it out..
I listened to both parts. I have read his ‘Hall of thousand columns’ number of years back. I was also stuck at his consciousness of time and history when he went to the memorial of sati which Ibn batuta saw 675 years back. He also mentioned how his indian driver started worshipping at the stone memorials by putting flowers there and he observed how he realised that Indian religiosity is not the construct of brahmins of popularly imagined in the west.
I was also stuck at his amazement in old Delhi where he went to a rubbishy place called ‘khuni haathi’ (I think) which was where Batuta saw Mohammed Bin Tughlaq used to have his opponents trampled under the feet of elephants fixed with knives.Khuni haathi
He is also able to connect many incidents in batutas life such as batuta getting a mystical moment near Honavar, and which was predicted by an Cairene muslim mystic.
Very interesting